The author of this short story is Shirley Jackson. The Lottery ranks among the most prominent short stories throughout America’s literature history. Writing an essay on The Lottery, a student cannot help but notice the paradox in the story’s reception. Some say that the literature received a negative response, yet it is widely known that the short story has been used for teaching literature in various schools.
Notwithstanding this contradiction, when writing an essay on The Lottery, it is imperative for the student to explore how the short story got its name. As the student does so, he/she will be killing two birds with one stone, as he/she will simultaneously identify the literature’s main characters.
Since this is a short story, an essay written about it is bound to deviate from the rules governing a literature essay that basically require highlighting only the main points. In the case of The Lottery, a student could go further into details, analyzing the plot and themes. It is expected that a student doing an essay on The Lottery will bring out salient themes such as speculation and bewilderment, together with clear outdated abuse.
The Lottery has been interpreted in diverse ways, thus it follows that the student will clearly state his/her interpretation of the quality of the work while writing the analysis of The Lottery. The student should avoid at all costs incorporating the interpretations of other people, or creating bias which would mislead the reader.
Like every literature essay, an essay on The Lottery should be done in simplified language so that by reading it, a person gets a glimpse of the short story. The essay should be written in a way that persuades the reader that the book is worth reading.
The Lottery essay example
“The Lottery” is known to be a short story written by Shirley Jackson in the objective of the third person viewpoint. It is also an outrageous and fascinating parable full of suspense and moral. The events take place in a small village that is inhabited by average residents at first sight. The villagers that are gathered at the lottery square are known to be all the main heroes. They are said to be flat and dormant, primitive and full of bias people throughout the whole story. Tessie Hutchinson is known to be one of the most prominent characters of the story. She seems to be the most awaken, eventually finds herself at the end of the lottery ritual the one who is able to recognize the total immorality of the lottery tradition within the villagers, its senselessness and atrocity, etc.
The leitmotif of the story is the tradition of the villagers embodied within a strange ritual. It is how rigid the villagers are in keeping orders and traditions, traditional practices, thoughts and behaviors, rules, duties, etc.
The villagers blindly deal with the lottery tradition year by year and see no reason to stop it as far as they are so very much accustomed that conduct lottery for sake of conducting lottery, indeed. They keep doing it since time immemorial and are already mesmerized, zombied by it. The oldest of the village – Mr. Warner is the symbol of tradition in the story. He cannot stop complaining inn relation to the morality issues of the youth caused by their traditionalism lack.